You can’t help but be surprised, or the magic of harp, flute and drums at the 37th Vilnius Jazz | Culture

My own door to Vilnius jazz opened eight years ago in 2016. This coincided with the decision to embark on wider musical explorations, including the lands of jazz and improvisational music. While sitting somewhere on the deck, in the cramped seats of the Old Vilnius Theater, we had to watch “The Thing” – let’s not be afraid of the word cult trio of Mats Gustafsson, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love. The standard composition – saxophone, double bass and drums – surprised the trio with their ability to create a fantastically energetic performance as if without effort, as if out of nothing.

I was surprised every year when I visited “Vilnius Jazz”, despite the fact that I am quite a spoiled musical wanderer, who always likes to drift into the realms of the strangest sounds with great joy and say that I have heard a lot.

Organizers’ photo/”Nout”

But the wonder which the venerable Plato contemplated as a source of philosophy, thank God, I can still experience. For example, when the program of the 37th “Vilnius Jazz” was announced, I ran through the names with my eyes and suddenly stopped. Nout. What is this? In the general program filled with the names of the luminaries of the genre, this name meant absolutely nothing to me. Something new. I dived into Bandcamp, Youtube and was surprised. Fantastic team! I haven’t heard such hurricane energy in a long time.

Nout is far from the mothballed old-timer of the stage that I would have passed over in my craze. This is a trio born just four years ago. And he was born quite by accident. In fact, many good things in the colorful world happen by chance.

So, it all started on a sunny day in 2020. summer morning… Just kidding. I really don’t know what the time was at that time, let alone the weather. The only known fact from the surviving sources is that in 2020 the trio of French drummer Blanche Lafuente, flutist Delphine Joussein and harpist Rafaelle Rinaudo came together. lowered, improvised and immediately fell under the spell of the music muse Euterpe, who does not promise to lead anywhere.

And what surprises this collective? Go back to the previous paragraph before the last sentence. Read it again. Drummer, flutist, harpist. This is where the tuna is unique. It is more difficult to find a group with such a composition in the jazz field than a needle in a haystack mentioned in the treasures of wisdom of the ancients.

Of course, one can remember John Coltrane’s wife, harpist Alice Coltrane and her collectives, but “Nout” is a weapon of a slightly different caliber. In the case of this trio, it’s not just the non-standard lineup that’s surprising, but what that lineup produces. In the case of “Nout” we are not dealing with the contemplative promoted by A. Coltrane spiritual jazz or other atmospheric, chamber music, but with jazz, which is stuffed with the best ingredients of metal and rock music. When you hear what “Nout” eviscerates with a flute or a graceful harp in front, it seems that we are watching a comic performance, the plot of which revolves around how a hunter armed with a pitchfork tries to hunt a deer. But the comical part ends there, because Nout manages to skin the deer!

In concert posters and press releases, the name “Nout” is constantly surrounded by loud phrases. One of the most popular is a trio maneuvering between the traditions of “Nirvana” and Sun Ra, whose veins flow with the noisy blood of John Zorn’s avant-garde jazz. I won’t try to judge how much Nirvana, Sun Ra or John Zorn is in Nout, but I’d venture to say it’s mostly the latter. Especially considering grindcore’o permeated era of the project “Naked City”.

After listening to the debut mini-album “Nout” and the concert recording “Live Album”, one can find much more layers than only “Nirvana”, Sun Ra or J. Zorn. B. Lafuente, D. Joussein and R. Rinaudo have touched such radically opposite musical poles as classical and noise, or metal and electronics, so the palette of different layers in the music performed by this trio of girls is damn wide! If we had to put “Nout” into a genre framework, it would be noisy jazz permeated with metal and rock music with a considerable handful hardcore‘oand smaller handfuls of classical and contemporary academic music.

In addition, Nout’s music is characterized by particularly sharp contrasts. The girls, with the help of moderate passages of flute and harp, like to lure the listener into a cozy home, let him get comfortable in a beautiful living room, pour him a cup of warm tea, and suddenly, unexpectedly, from ambush, hit him hard over the head with a noisy, intense metal worker jazz hammer!

The news about Nout’s talent to amaze, perhaps in the literal sense of the word, appears to have reached the most essential circles of music lovers, festivals and critical communities. This is evidenced by the fact that the trio in 2023 won the “Zenith” award initiated by the European Jazz Network (EJN) and the “12 Points” festival, given to the brightest European jazz groups or musicians of today.

And besides, Trost Records, a Vienna-based publishing company well known to fans of avant-garde jazz, is aiming its claws at the noisy “Nout”, which has already managed to release the trio’s album “Live Album” mentioned earlier in the text. This put the drum, flute and harp trio in the same label catalog alongside names like Peter Brötzmann, Mats Gustafsson, Paal Nilssen-Love, Mette Rasmussen, Joe McPhee, Barry Guy and many others.

It can be safely stated that the 37th edition of the Vilnius Jazz festival is still able to discover new interesting things, and not just stand on the old Mohican performances. Just like the millennia-old Stelmužė oak tree. At this point, we would also like to remember the album “Nustebusiam obštati” by Vytautas Pliadis project “Obšrrr”. Why? And because when you visit “Vilnius Jazz” you will not be surprised. You will be surprised, and one of those surprises will undoubtedly come to you in the form of Nout!